snowybunting:The hotelier agreed at the time to release Cohen - who is worth around $9.3billion - from the sale and repair it. Now he has sold it to Cohen for $16 million more than the pre-damaged price.

Wynn must have repaired it with the really nice duct tape, the kind with the gold flecks in it.

I guess it adds value to have a Las Vegas hotel owner's elbow punch a hole through it

A billionaire hedge fund manager bought Picasso's Le Rêve for $155million - t$16million more than he first agreed to pay right before its previous owner tore a hole in it with his elbow. Steven A. Cohen, whose SAC Capital just settled two insider-trading lawsuits with the government for $616 million, bought himself the belated gift after first agreeing to but it for $139milllion in 2006 from Vegas mogul Steve Wynn. The price is estimated to be the highest ever paid for an artwork by a U.S. collector

what's awesome is that this guy pays less tax as a percentage of his income than you or i. is america great or what!

It's not my thing, but the price of something is what the last person is willing to pay for it. And there are a whole bunch of people with a lot of money that have convinced themselves that this stuff has value. Most of the time they are buying it for an investment, not because the think it has artistic merit. It is a fascinating thing.

FlashHarry:A billionaire hedge fund manager bought Picasso's Le Rêve for $155million - t$16million more than he first agreed to pay right before its previous owner tore a hole in it with his elbow. Steven A. Cohen, whose SAC Capital just settled two insider-trading lawsuits with the government for $616 million, bought himself the belated gift after first agreeing to but it for $139milllion in 2006 from Vegas mogul Steve Wynn. The price is estimated to be the highest ever paid for an artwork by a U.S. collector

what's awesome is that this guy pays less tax as a percentage of his income than you or i. is america great or what!

Never quite understood Picasso's popularity. I'm more of a impressionist/ post-impressionist guy myself. If I could own any one major piece of artwork, it would be one of the paintings in Monet's Rouen Cathedral series. Cubisim has just never done it for me- the crap they shiat out these days even less. IMO, the impressionists hit the sweet spot between skillful composition and innovative technique. These days, it's just competitive masturbation over who can use the most "innovative" techniques and materials.

I did have fun at MOMA last time I was in New York. See the late and post impressionists, and just tee off making fun of the newer stuff with a friend. Low hanging fruit and all that.

farkeruk:The stupidity of the art world. If Picasso had made a dirty protest on a canvas, it would be worth thousands.

IIRC he actually said something to that effect. My sister seriously studied art for a while (she actually made some pretty good shiat that got offers n' stuff) and she assures me Picasso was damn good, but I have to be honest and admit I can't tell the difference between his work and a fourth-grader's. The most I gathered from my sister's explanation of cubism is that it's not the aesthetics so much as deconstructing art itself. Artists first learn how to paint or sculpt as realistically as possible and Picasso would make a mockery of it, but not by just smearing paint on a canvas.

The best analogy I can think of is challenging a mechanical engineer to design the worst possible car that was street-legal and actually functioned reliably enough to sell (a.k.a. the Homer). You're working within strict constraints you've honed to optimize for all while making a mockery of them in every way your imagination can think of. For example, you'd have to find the worst possible injection & ignition timing that didn't kill the engine at a certain rpm. You'd have to find ghastly trim materials that aged rapidly but don't degrade structurally. The seat would have to be as ugly and uncomfortable as possible without endangering the occupant in a crash. At first it's difficult, but the variations are limitless. It actually wouldn't be any easier than designing a good car but it would take another engineer to actually see what the point was, so it doesn't surprise me that it would take a serious artist to understand what Picasso was doing. Thing is, most people who can afford to buy Picasso's works aren't artists.

cptjeff:Never quite understood Picasso's popularity. I'm more of a impressionist/ post-impressionist guy myself. If I could own any one major piece of artwork, it would be one of the paintings in Monet's Rouen Cathedral series. Cubisim has just never done it for me- the crap they shiat out these days even less. IMO, the impressionists hit the sweet spot between skillful composition and innovative technique. These days, it's just competitive masturbation over who can use the most "innovative" techniques and materials.

Here's the bottom line on modern art: if you lived in late 19th century art, the biggest audience, most expressive and most money was in painting and sculpture. So, the best artists were painting and sculpting. What happened in the early part of the 20th century? Cinema. All the best artists leaped into a new form that delivered the most expression, biggest audience and most money. Renoir's son didn't become a painter, he became a film director (La Règle du Jeu is worth a look). A vacuum was left in terms of gallery art, and was filled by charlatans supplying crap, to an audience who still clung onto the old snobbery about the importance of art galleries.